OK, thanks—this is the sort of argument I was looking for, and it is updating me.
Do you think there’s a common cause between colonialism and the IR? Say, science + capitalism? Or maybe simply engineering culture (producing steam engines, but before that ships + navigation?)
Do you think there’s a common cause between colonialism and the IR? Say, science + capitalism? Or maybe simply engineering culture (producing steam engines, but before that ships + navigation?)
Possible but unclear. China had its own engineering culture, for example, as did the Muslim world, and both had proto-capitalism, in that they had large mercantile networks with significant wealth.
My models of this have shifted a lot over the last decade or so. One factor that’s seemed the most variable in importance over that time has been political centralization. It looks to me like the old world has spawned three or four major civilization groups, depending on how you count things; Europe, the Middle East, India, and China. Europe was the only one that ‘never really unified’; Rome only barely touched the bits of Europe that ended up leading the IR. When you have books like a Farewell to Alms, they point to Britain becoming a ‘nation of shopkeepers’ through downwards social mobility, and this being a sort of domesticating and improving force. But those forces were even stronger in China (according to Sinologists who have reviewed his book; he touches on the comparison only briefly).
Was it relevant that lots of different countries in Europe were trying different things, with different focuses, and a handful of them led to industrial growth, that then ended up seeming like “what all of Europe” was like? Or, if it had happened in China instead, would we be pointing at features of Fujian that turned out to be the ideal birthplace, and ignore its position as an imperial province in much the same way my analysis here is ignoring Britain’s position as part of Christendom?
See, if they both had engineering cultures and proto-capitalism, that seems like evidence for the “Because colonialism” hypothesis.
But I do think the “never really unified” hypothesis is intriguing. After all, the Chinese not only destroyed their own treasure fleet but basically banned maritime trade and sent the army to depopulate their own coastline for 20km or so inland, IIRC, because of the misguided policy decisions of the central government. No central government, no misguided policy decisions applied to entire civilizations.
that seems like evidence for the “Because colonialism” hypothesis.
Another thing to think about: according to my way of looking at things, Muslim Arabs colonized the middle east, southern side of the Mediterranean, and India; this includes massive transfers of resources from the periphery to the heartland. (Mansa Musa going on the Hajj seems similar to Spain discovering Cerro Rico, for example.) And yet we don’t see an IR in the Muslim world; is this just because barbarians on the frontiers caused collapse too soon, or was it just not going to happen there?
if they both had engineering cultures and proto-capitalism
I think there’s a difference between ‘proto-capitalism’ and ‘capitalism’, and a difference between ‘proto-science’ and ‘science’. Like, I can point to several Islamic figures who are the equivalent of Bacon, but I can’t point to many institutions that are the equivalent of the Royal Society or Republic of Letters. (I’m only moderately informed about this period of history, tho, so absence of evidence is only mild evidence of absence.)
Like, one of the things that was relevant to James Watt commercializing his steam engine was an engineer who knew how to bore iron cylinders in the right way, which he knew because it was useful for making cannons. I think Europe had much higher demand per capita for cannons than China (but am not sure about this, and maybe absolute demand is what matters?), which maybe led to tech transfer in a way that the high points of Chinese engineering didn’t.
Good point about the colonization. One thing I was surprised to learn when I researched the conquistadors stuff is that Muslim merchants, fleets, armies, and rulers had penetrated into India, Indonesia, all around the indian ocean, and even into China I think by the time the Portuguese showed up. Malacca was ruled by a Muslim for example. And yeah, no doubt this led to a lot of resources flowing back towards the middle east.
How much damage did the Mongols do to Muslim science? My vague guess would be, quite a lot? Perhaps this is also relevant.
How much damage did the Mongols do to Muslim science? My vague guess would be, quite a lot? Perhaps this is also relevant.
Both the capture of Cordoba in 1236 and the capture of Baghdad in 1258 seem relevant to me; both were home to some of the aforementioned Muslim paragons of science, and we don’t see any further paragons after that period (until the Timurid Renaissance, which I view as mostly having regional paragons instead of global ones, and so was more akin to the Carolingian Renaissance in terms of broader historical impact than the European one).
This is perhaps more evidence for the “centralization decreases robustness to disruption” theory; the House of Wisdom in particular was an attempt to gather all of the intellectual wealth of the empire into one place, which then meant that if it’s burned down and the scholars murdered, there’s not much to start over from.
OK, thanks—this is the sort of argument I was looking for, and it is updating me.
Do you think there’s a common cause between colonialism and the IR? Say, science + capitalism? Or maybe simply engineering culture (producing steam engines, but before that ships + navigation?)
Possible but unclear. China had its own engineering culture, for example, as did the Muslim world, and both had proto-capitalism, in that they had large mercantile networks with significant wealth.
My models of this have shifted a lot over the last decade or so. One factor that’s seemed the most variable in importance over that time has been political centralization. It looks to me like the old world has spawned three or four major civilization groups, depending on how you count things; Europe, the Middle East, India, and China. Europe was the only one that ‘never really unified’; Rome only barely touched the bits of Europe that ended up leading the IR. When you have books like a Farewell to Alms, they point to Britain becoming a ‘nation of shopkeepers’ through downwards social mobility, and this being a sort of domesticating and improving force. But those forces were even stronger in China (according to Sinologists who have reviewed his book; he touches on the comparison only briefly).
Was it relevant that lots of different countries in Europe were trying different things, with different focuses, and a handful of them led to industrial growth, that then ended up seeming like “what all of Europe” was like? Or, if it had happened in China instead, would we be pointing at features of Fujian that turned out to be the ideal birthplace, and ignore its position as an imperial province in much the same way my analysis here is ignoring Britain’s position as part of Christendom?
See, if they both had engineering cultures and proto-capitalism, that seems like evidence for the “Because colonialism” hypothesis.
But I do think the “never really unified” hypothesis is intriguing. After all, the Chinese not only destroyed their own treasure fleet but basically banned maritime trade and sent the army to depopulate their own coastline for 20km or so inland, IIRC, because of the misguided policy decisions of the central government. No central government, no misguided policy decisions applied to entire civilizations.
Another thing to think about: according to my way of looking at things, Muslim Arabs colonized the middle east, southern side of the Mediterranean, and India; this includes massive transfers of resources from the periphery to the heartland. (Mansa Musa going on the Hajj seems similar to Spain discovering Cerro Rico, for example.) And yet we don’t see an IR in the Muslim world; is this just because barbarians on the frontiers caused collapse too soon, or was it just not going to happen there?
I think there’s a difference between ‘proto-capitalism’ and ‘capitalism’, and a difference between ‘proto-science’ and ‘science’. Like, I can point to several Islamic figures who are the equivalent of Bacon, but I can’t point to many institutions that are the equivalent of the Royal Society or Republic of Letters. (I’m only moderately informed about this period of history, tho, so absence of evidence is only mild evidence of absence.)
Like, one of the things that was relevant to James Watt commercializing his steam engine was an engineer who knew how to bore iron cylinders in the right way, which he knew because it was useful for making cannons. I think Europe had much higher demand per capita for cannons than China (but am not sure about this, and maybe absolute demand is what matters?), which maybe led to tech transfer in a way that the high points of Chinese engineering didn’t.
Good point about the colonization. One thing I was surprised to learn when I researched the conquistadors stuff is that Muslim merchants, fleets, armies, and rulers had penetrated into India, Indonesia, all around the indian ocean, and even into China I think by the time the Portuguese showed up. Malacca was ruled by a Muslim for example. And yeah, no doubt this led to a lot of resources flowing back towards the middle east.
How much damage did the Mongols do to Muslim science? My vague guess would be, quite a lot? Perhaps this is also relevant.
Both the capture of Cordoba in 1236 and the capture of Baghdad in 1258 seem relevant to me; both were home to some of the aforementioned Muslim paragons of science, and we don’t see any further paragons after that period (until the Timurid Renaissance, which I view as mostly having regional paragons instead of global ones, and so was more akin to the Carolingian Renaissance in terms of broader historical impact than the European one).
This is perhaps more evidence for the “centralization decreases robustness to disruption” theory; the House of Wisdom in particular was an attempt to gather all of the intellectual wealth of the empire into one place, which then meant that if it’s burned down and the scholars murdered, there’s not much to start over from.